Sociology professor has book published about police use of force
Craig Boylstein, professor of sociology at Coastal Carolina University, has recently had a book about police force published by Lynne Rienner Publishers.
"When Police Use Force: Context, Methods, Outcomes" focuses on a number of questions, among them: Where does police power to use force come from? How have the federal courts ruled on the subject? What sort of guidelines have police departments given their officers, and are they appropriate guidelines? Do the officers follow them?
Boylstein was approached by a publisher in 2012 about submitting a proposal on the topic of police force after he presented research at the Southern Sociological Society annual meeting. His research was on media reports and citizen video recordings of police use of force incidents.
"Police use of force was one of the topics I studied as a graduate student at the University of Florida," Boylstein said. "I found the video recording and uploading of such incidents on YouTube and other media outlets to be something that could change how people view police-subject interactions, and as a sociologist I wanted to examine how reports, perceptions and outcomes related to police use of force would change through time."
Boylstein teaches Comparative Policing; Individual and Society; Sociology of Drugs and Drug Control; Methods in the Social Sciences; and Sociology of Sports. He addresses police use of force in Comparative Policing and Individual and Society with his students.
Prior to joinging the CCU faculty in August 2008, Boylstein spent four years as an associate investigator for veteran's affairs in Gainesville, Fla.
He said one of the main purposes of his book is to help alleviate some of the ambiguity surrounding the use of force by officers.
"My goal is to eliminate the ambiguous nature of when and how much force should be applied to subjects during police encounters," he said. "One outcome of accomplishing this goal would be the elimination of discriminatory outcomes we currently see in the U.S. related to the officer-induced fatalities of unarmed African American men."
Boylstein said that lowering the fatality rates during police-subject encounters starts with ensuring that each encounter follows the same standard, but he acknowledged that the United States has a "long way to go in achieving that kind of standard."
